Book cover design for Wydawnictwo Literackie, Szczepan Twardoch "Pokora".
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Concept of this particular book cover was very problematic and complex due to the restrictions on use of artwork. George Grosz, Panorama Down with Liebknecht, 1919 was selected by Publishing House and the Author. It should remain as it is, as large as possible and on top of that print should not eat up a lot of funds. It should be cheap and easy to print, this means no wrappers, dustcovers, overlays or other special print effects were possible.
The problem of projects with original artworks is that they tend to be a bit flat and unappealing to me. After tons of projects in early stage it seemed that only small-scale use of this outstanding painting could work out in aesthetic composition and typography suggesting that this is a fiction book cover. I should have given up on scaling it up then and drop this turd right away, but i didn’t. After series of prototyping sessions, I’ve found a solution, to use the spine of a book as a main title page and a place for a bar code. It was possible with a little help of cheap and brilliant invention which is high-volume paper.
Thank to Coronavirus Pandemic, this cover was clogging my pipeline for months. Let me know what you think about it as it finally flushed out of my hard drive.
Here are the results of "spine cover" concept:
:)
